Baekhyun was nothing short of miserable. It was July—too hot, too humid, and he had a raging head cold that threatened to take him out of commission for a few weeks at least.

“Easy to find my ,” he muttered, snuffling pathetically and trying not to groan as he shuffled down a back alley of Seoul, half convinced that he was going to be robbed and murdered, and not necessarily in that order. He could picture the headlines: idiot college student killed in pursuit of medicine, best friend unapologetic.

“ing Luhan,” he hissed, “and his stupid Chinese medicine and ty directions.” His cell phone had died three blocks back, and he hoped to whatever god was out there that the directions scratched across a diner napkin were more accurate than they seemed to be, because he really was terribly lost and not entirely sure if he had missed the last turn.

Then he stumbled, sprawling face first onto the pavement. and trying to ignore the stinging in his palms, he rolled onto his back, eyes closed as he decided that he’d like to die now please, because he was sweaty and hot and his future prospects weren’t looking so great anyway.

He felt something poke into his side. “Hey, are you dead?”

“No,” he sighed, opening his eyes to see a figure looming over him, “unfortunately not.”

“Then get the off my walkway,” the taller, and, Baekhyun noted, rather attractive man said, voice terribly bored, cigarette perched between his lips.

“Your walkway?” Baekhyun scoffed, his affronted tone undermined somewhat by his stuffy nose.

“Yeah,” the guy responded, nudging him again with the toe of his converse.

Of course, Baekhyun thought, feeling more than a little sorry for himself, I would fall on some ’s path. Sighing, he got up, brushing himself off as he reflected that at least the guy hadn’t shot him or something.

“Hey, um, can I ask you something?”

The man rolled his eyes as he took a drag of his cigarette, “No, but you’ll probably ask anyway.”

“Do you know where Broom and Bone is?” Baekhyun asked, feeling simultaneously pissed off and terribly ridiculous, regretting his decision to ever listen to anything Luhan had to say.

“I guess today’s your lucky day,” the man said, dropping the cigarette and grinding it under his heel, “you happened to face plant right in front of it.”

Baekhyun glanced at the storefront behind the man, seeing a wide windows, curtained with sheer fabric and a door with the name of the store in ornate gold lettering on the glass.

“Oh, thanks.” He told the stranger, thinking that even if he was handsome, he was incredibly rude.

“Sure.”

Baekhyun walked past him, pushing the door open, bell tinkling as he entered. Inside, he was met with what looked more like a coffee shop than an apothecary’s shop, and he wondered if Luhan actually knew what he was talking about when he recommended the place.

“So,” the man’s voice came from behind him, “what can I help you with?” Baekhyun turned, stumbling backwards in surprise, managing to knock his hip into a table and fall over a chair, landing winded, battered, and feeling like he wanted to cry, hit something, or do some combination of the two.

“Man, you are way too clumsy for your own good.” Baekhyun glared up at the man, who now had a cheerful green apron tied over his faded band tee and ripped jeans, emblazoned with a gold “Broom and Bone” over his chest. He reached out a hand, amusement sparking in his toffee colored eyes. “I’m Chanyeol, by the way. And this is sort of my shop.”

Baekhyun took his hand, letting him be pulled up, ignoring the tingle that went through him at the way Chanyeol’s fingertips lingered on his. “I’m Baekhyun, and this is your shop?”

“Yup.”

“So,” Baekhyun said slowly, “that makes you the witch?”

“Nah, I’m her son. She’s on vacation.”

“You have got to be ing kidding me,” Baekhyun moaned, flopping onto the chair that he had fallen over. “For how long?”

“The next three years or so, I think,” Chanyeol replied, tone becoming significantly more sympathetic at Baekhyun’s crestfallen face, “She sort of just goes where the wind takes her.”

“Of course she does,” Baekhyun muttered before eyeing Chanyeol suspiciously. “I don’t suppose you can help me?”

“Depends on what you need helping with,” He answered, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Just something for my cold,” Baekhyun replied, studiously ignoring the way Chanyeol’s biceps were now flexed.

“Can’t you go to like CVS or something? DayQuil works just fine, you know.”

“I know, I know,” Baekhyun said irritably, waving his hand, “But ing Luhan told me to come here because it’s ‘the real and not going to poison me with chemicals,’ and there’s no use arguing with him because he always gets his way, so here I am.”

“You know Luhan?” Chanyeol questioned, interest sparking in his eyes, voice becoming noticeably warmer.

“Yeah he’s my roommate. How do you know him?”

“Not important,” Chanyeol responded, breezing past Baekhyun and the seating area to the far wall, where he opened a door with a “Staff Only” sign on it. “Come on, I’ll whip something up for you.”

Grumbling to himself, Baekhyun carefully picked his way across the store to enter the room.

“Well,” Baekhyun commented, as he walked through the door, “this is sort of unexpected.”

Chanyeol laughed, and Baekhyun noted in passing that even though his eye twitched and he was positively guffawing, there was something sort of endearing about it. “What’d you expect? A cauldron in a corner and sacrifices scattered about?”

“You forgot the pickled toads,” Baekhyun remarked dryly. “No, I just didn’t expect it to be so…”

“Clean?”

“Yeah, that.” Baekhyun surveyed the room, taking in the light blue ceiling and dark wood floors, the left and right walls lined with neatly labeled wooden cabinets, and the opposite wall playing host to floor-to ceiling bookcases, an antique wooden table in the center of the room and drying herbs tied in tidy bunches and left to hang above the table.

“Obviously you’ve never been to a witch’s home.” Chanyeol smirked, pointing to a tall stool. “Sit there.”

“Can’t say I have,” Baekhyun told him as he sat down, swinging his legs as Chanyeol pulled different and slightly suspicious items out of the cabinets, tossing them into a cheerful yellow bowl he had grabbed from under the table.

“You seem remarkably alright with all of this,” Chanyeol noted as he started mixing and grinding the different ingredients.

“Honestly, I’m too sick and tired to really care, and Lulu’s always being all starry-eyed and mystical at home, so I’m sort of a bit used to it.”

Chanyeol laughed, “That does sound like Luhan.”

“You never did tell me how you know him.”

“Oh, we go way back; our moms were like best friends in college or something so we saw a lot of each other, even though he grew up in China and I grew up here.”

“Oh, cool.”

Chanyeol hummed in agreement. “Alright, now hold still,” he told Baekhyun, coming around the table, long fingers moving to Baekhyun’s chin, tilting Baekhyun’s head back as he squinted.

“What are you doing?” Baekhyun squeaked, trying and failing to stop a blush from spreading across his cheeks.

“I’m figuring out dosage, and I said to hold still.” Baekhyun complied, blush burning its way across his cheekbones as his gaze flickered nervously from Chanyeol’s face to the far wall.

“Alright,” Chanyeol announced, clapping, “I’ve got it figured out.”

He poured the potion, now a nice shade of lilac and smelling faintly of mint, into a glass vial, stoppering it with a cork. “So, one teaspoon with every meal and you’ll be right as rain in a day or two.”

“Great,” Baekhyun said, feeling terribly relieved as he pulled out his wallet. “How much will it cost?”

“Hmmm,” Chanyeol mused, tilting his head and tapping his chin, “For you, one kiss.”

“What?” Baekhyun managed to splutter, blush spreading to his ears. “No way! Why can’t I pay in real money?”

“Because this,” he noted, tapping the vial, “is magic, and it costs different things—it’s not bound by conventions like paper money.”

“Why a kiss?” Baekhyun asked, fingertips going to his lips.

“Because that’s what the cost is for you… It sort of varies customer to customer, but this is something of middling importance so you have to give something of reciprocal value. It was either that or the color of your hair. You pick.”

Baekhyun frowned, hand going to absently card through his hair. This would be his first kiss, and he was maybe sort of saving it for someone special. Then again, he was twenty and boyfriendless, and Chanyeol was kind of ridiculously handsome, and even though he was a bit of an at first, he really didn’t seem all that bad.

“Okay,” Baekhyun sighed, “a kiss it is. But you might get my cold.”

“Nope, I don’t get sick,” Chanyeol remarked flippantly as he made his way over to where Baekhyun sat.

“Well, aren’t you lucky,” Baekhyun said acerbically, heart pounding in his chest as Chanyeol leaned down, lips hovering centimeters from his own.

“The luckiest,” he breathed, before leaning down, lips pressing against Baekhyun’s, and Baekhyun’s sure his brain short circuited, fried by the electric tingle that surged from his lips straight through his toes at the contact, because everything goes blank and before he knows it, he’s pulling away, breathless, from a slightly dazed Chanyeol, his own hair mussed from where the taller man’s hands had threaded through it.

Chanyeol straightened up, tongue flicking out to dart across his lips. “Interesting.”

Baekhyun raised his eyebrows, trying to resist the urge to grab him and start kissing him all over again, “Interesting?”

“Yeah,” Chanyeol mused, straightening his decidedly wrinkled apron, “interesting.”

Baekhyun sneezed violently then, nose scrunching up, eyes screwing shut as he leaned over, rocked forward by the force of the sneeze.

“I hate being sick,” he moaned piteously as Chanyeol handed him his potion.

“Well, you won’t be for much longer.”

“Thanks to you, I guess,” he said as he followed Chanyeol back into the café.

“Hey, if you want to wait a second, I can make you some herbal tea for the road, it’ll make you feel a lot better,” he promised.

“Sure,” Baekhyun said, finding that he was in no hurry to leave the air-conditioned shop, “why not?” He leaned on the counter as Chanyeol busied himself with making the tea. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but this seems like a weird place for a tea slash magic shop.”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s only going to be for a few more days.”

“Moving location?”

“Yeah the building moves every week or so; I’m hoping to get somewhere fancy this time, rich old ladies always want their kids future’s read and they pay a whole lot for it,” he told Baekhyun, excitement evident in his voice, “the last month has been shady back streets, so hopefully the shop’s saving up for something good.”

“Wait, back up, it moves every week?”

“Or so, yes.”

“Okay,” Baekhyun said, drawing out the vowel, deciding that he should probably just roll with it, “Then how does anyone ever find it again?”

“Locator spell. Once you know where it is, you can always find it again.”

“That’s convenient.”

Chanyeol shrugged, “Magic usually is. Now,” he said, handing Baekhyun and iced tea that smelled like springtime, “here you go, and tell Lu I said hi.”

“Thanks.”

“Of course, my treat,” Chanyeol said, and Baekhyun couldn’t be sure but it looked like there might be a little bit of a blush across his cheeks, “And take the side door,” he pointed to a frosted glass door to his left, caution sign taped to the glass, “it’s magic, so it’ll drop you off outside your front door. Just think of your address and you’ll be home.”

“Great, thanks,” Baekhyun hesitated, hand hovering over the doorknob, “I’ll see you around, I guess.”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Alright,” he said trying not to be too terribly awkward, “well, bye.”

“Bye!”

Baekhyun stepped through the door, glancing back to see Chanyeol smiling at him surrounded by something that looked suspiciously like a pink glow.

ooo Baekhyun sees pink glow! what do you think it might mean....hint: it has to do with covens

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